Customer Reviews

The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honor, Race, and Nation in Brazil, 1864–1945 (Latin America Otherwise)

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This well-researched book breaks new ground in Brazil's military and social history. It explores the paradox of using the army to build national identity with forced enlistment from marginal social groups---including convicts, vagrants and homosexuals. The army became a feared fighting force, but mostly by crushing internal rebels and smaller neighbors like Paraguay, not first-rate opponents. Brazilians came to dread military service, avoiding it whenever possible, and eventually a less arbitrary recruitment system emerged. Beattie paints a convincing picture of the evolution of a major institution in modern Brazil. His broad approach to evidence, deploying an impressive array of conventional and innovative sources, further displays the potential of this new military history. T. Whigham's "I Die With My Country" and "The Paraguayan War" have important new material on the War of the Triple Alliance. The army's bloody role in suppressing dissent is covered, often brilliantly, in R. Levine, "Vale of Tears," T. Diacon, "Millenarian Vision, Capitalist Reality," and especially E. da Cunha, "Rebellion in the Backlands." S. Caulfield, "In Defense of Honor" is another fresh view of Brazilian society in the same era, but Beattie really does offer something new.